


Motion City

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Blood and Water [19]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 04:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10563261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "any, any, getting lost in a big city."Evan and John escape from the FBI building and get lost in the big city together.





	

“We’re lost,” John said. He was following Evan down a series of alleys, away from the building that may or may not have been actual FBI offices. Based on the seal on the floor and the plaques and memorials hanging on the walls, John thought the building had been legitimate, but he doubted that the FBI agents who’d interrogated him and Evan were legitimate agents. At least, not all of them.  
  
And then Nancy.  
  
“No, we’re not.” Evan paused, consulted a mental map, turned an abrupt left and kept walking. He shed his jacket as he went - San Francisco in May was pleasant, even late at night - and rolled up his sleeves. He was altering his appearance.  
  
“They’re going to find us,” John said. “This is their city. You haven’t lived here since you were sixteen. You -”  
  
Evan spun around, caught John by the arm. “Baby John, listen to me. I know what I’m doing.”  
  
That brought John up short. “Why do you keep calling me that?”  
  
“Because right now we’re not Major Lorne and Colonel Sheppard. This is a different war. This isn’t who we are every day; this is part of our past that we never really left behind. We’re leaving it behind tonight. But we need to embrace it one more time before the fight is done.”  
  
John’s memories of Bluebell from his adolescence were watered down with time, with passion, with nostalgia, of a skinny-limbed, wide-eyed Evan who’d twined his arms around John and kissed him and kissed him and kissed him before skimming out of his clothes and riding John all night long.  
  
John’s memories of Bluebell in Atlantis, the man who helped rescue John from the throes of the Iratus virus ( _that was still in his blood_ ), were fuzzier. Most of them involved rough sex on the floor of a jumper. He’d never really appreciated Evan’s carefully cultivated supply lines on Atlantis, the wider network he must have had in Pegasus to get John and the rest of his team out of the clutches of an inter-planetary tribunal. John hadn’t realized he didn’t know Bluebell.  
  
Evan had grown up in a Family, yes. But he hadn’t been like John, the heir to the throne. He’d been a bastard prince turned foot soldier, had clawed his way up the ranks to officer, and he was something else.  
  
“We have to get back to Atlantis,” John said.  
  
Evan shook his head. “Not good enough. If we don’t take care of this now, we will never be safe on Earth again.”  
  
“Evan -”  
  
“John.” Evan closed his eyes, looking pained. “I’m so, so sorry to have dragged you into this. There’s someplace I need to go, to help set this right. And you’re right - I haven’t been in this city in a long time, don’t know it as well as they do. But I know enough. Do you trust me?”  
  
John nodded, but he wasn’t sure.  
  
“Okay. Then let’s go.” Evan continued walking.  
  
John trotted to keep up with him. He moved fast, for a guy as short as he was. “How do you know Nancy?”  
  
“She’s one of my cousins,” Evan said.  
  
And just like that, it all clicked into place. Nancy O’Hara. From Boston. Evan said his mother had been one of the O’Haras, married off to one of the Davytyans for political purposes, but she’d fled to California and taken up with the Flanigans for protection.  
  
That was why Nancy had felt so betrayed when she learned who John was. Not just because she was looking out for her career as a prosecutor, but because he was part of the life she’d run from.  
  
“I helped her get out. She ran to California. I ran to the Academy. She stepped into my shoes, with a lot of my old contacts - place to stay, small-time job, car. And I built a new life for myself.”  
  
“You helped a lot of people get out,” John said. “But you never really did.”  
  
“Like I said, some habits die hard.” Evan paused at the mouth of an alley, checked both directions of the cross street, took a sharp right. They were weaving through the backs of businesses - restaurants and shops. Evan had a wad of cash and was handing out twenties like they were nothing, and people were nodding, tucking them away, and remaining ignorant or silent when Declan and his men came by.  
  
The ruse lasted only so long until John and Evan were ducking out of a fortune teller’s shop and John heard Uncle Declan say, “Seen these men? There’s a C-note in it for you.”  
  
Where John and Evan had just been walking at a brisk pace, Evan broke into a run.

He burst out of the front of the shop and went tearing down the street, and dammit, they’d somehow ended up in Chinatown, they both stuck out like sore thumbs, what the hell was Evan thinking?  
  
Curses in Irish littered the air behind them.  
  
Evan spun to his left, like a football player dodging a tackle, and they were standing in the middle of an herbalist shop. Evan nearly crashed into the counter, but he said something in rapidfire Cantonese, and the elderly woman behind the counter nodded, stooped down behind it. When she straightened up, she was holding two loaded pistols and one spare magazine for each.  
  
Evan bowed his head, murmured a quick _m’koi_ , and then he and John were dashing out through the back.  
  
“Time to thin the herd,” Evan said. “You with me, Baby John?”  
  
John scanned the street. There. The dumpsters. Good cover. Choke point. They could pick off their pursuers one by one if they took either side. “Every step of the way, Bluebell.” He accepted the pistol Evan handed him, checked that it was ready to fire, and then pelted for the dumpster at top speed.  
  
It was a damn good thing John and Evan had had the same military training, because they didn’t need to speak, just act, use CRE signals. Evan was headed for the dumpster opposite John’s, and he crouched down. The first man came darting past them.  
  
Evan didn’t even hesitate. He fired at the man’s back, and he went down with a cry.  
  
More Irish curses filled the air. John heard a lot of untrue things about his and Evan’s mothers and some anatomically improbable antics with a goat, but he let them roll off him without comment, because this was battle. The enemies’ words didn’t matter. Their guns and bullets mattered.  
  
A bullet slammed into the dumpster John was ducking behind, and he flinched, but he was safe for now. The enemy was being cautious now. John caught Evan’s eye, signaled. Cover fire. The enemy would get wise fast, send guys around to the other side of the alley, try to catch John and Evan unawares.  
  
Evan nodded, signaled, _Three, two, one_ -  
  
He popped up over the side of the dumpster and let out several shots. John bolted for the mouth of the alley, got himself around the corner and out of the line of fire.  
  
Just in time to run into a couple of goons trying to sneak up the back. John didn’t think, just moved. Slammed a foot into the first guy’s knee, drove a knee up into his face when he doubled over with a howl of pain. Shot the other guy point-blank. Drove the third guy into the wall with a fist and a sickening crack of skull on brick, and then he heard Evan yelling in Pashto.  
  
_Cover me._  
  
John stepped out from around the corner and opened fire.  
  
Evan came sprinting toward him. He caught John by the arm, swung around the corner, and ducked down another alley. John followed, trusting blindly. Their phones had been taken. He couldn’t call for help. Someone had to rescue them. Surely Rodney or Daniel or Woolsey or _someone_ would get one of the Prometheus-class cruisers orbiting Earth to beam them to safety.  
  
Evan dashed halfway down the alley, vaulted onto a dumpster and took a flying leap into the air - and caught the bottom rung of a fire escape ladder. He hoisted himself up it, climbed like a damned spider, and landed on the balcony. He let the ladder down with a flick of a catch, beckoned for John. John was already halfway up the ladder when footsteps thundered into the alley.  
  
Evan pushed him. “Go, up, across the roof,” he hissed.

John scrambled across the flat rooftop, didn’t dare look back, but suddenly he was back in the streets of Kabul, listening to gunfire and bullet ricochets. He stumbled onto the roof and took off running. More footsteps thumped behind him, and he chanced a glance over his shoulder. Evan.  
  
Evan took the lead, leaped from rooftop to rooftop, further and further and lower and lower. John was on the wrong side of thirty-five, and one particularly rough landing reminded him of the time he’d busted his knee in a friendly game of basketball. How did Evan know where they were going?

The man in question dropped over the side of a building - and onto a drainpipe, shinned down it like a teenager. John only hesitated the barest fraction of a second before he followed.  
  
“Are they following us?” he asked.  
  
Evan was no longer running, had slowed to a brisk walk, taking deep breaths to slow his breathing, so he didn’t look like someone on the run. “Doubt it. I got the ladder up before they could reach it.”  
  
“What now?”  
  
“We need to get the hell out of the city.” Evan paused, flipped open a garbage can, rooted through it.  
  
John flinched at the smell. “Where the hell in the city are we?”  
  
Evan glanced over his shoulder, up at the nearest street sign. “Closer than I thought we would be.” He resumed rooting through the contents of the garbage can.  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
Evan straightened up with a wordless sound of triumph. He was holding a metal clothes hanger. “Getting us a ride.” He started untwisting it and shaping it with his hands.  
  
“How? You gonna call a cab?”  
  
Evan cast him an exasperated look and lowered his hands, keeping the malformed hanger against his side. “Really? Come on. Walk with me.” And now he looked perfectly casual, strolling along the sidewalk, hands in his pockets.  
  
They were leaving the commercial area, brick façades of shops and businesses turning into apartment buildings, which slowly faded into small houses. John fell into step beside him, careful not to walk too close even though this was Frisco, and kept a wary eye out. He also rolled up his sleeves and popped his collar, ducked his chin and hunched his shoulders. A good Sheppard Man lowered his head for no one. A better Sheppard Man knew how not to get caught.  
  
Evan stepped off the sidewalk, started to cross the street, and John kept in step with him. John glanced over his shoulder, checking for a tail Evan might be trying to shake, and then nearly ran into Evan.  
  
Who’d stopped and was -  
  
_Oh._  
  
Jamming the bent coat hanger down into the door of an old beat-up car.  
  
Before John could ask what the hell Evan thought he was doing, there was a soft _click_ , and then Evan opened the door. He slid across the passenger seat and gearbox to sit in the driver’s seat.  
  
“Get in,” he said.  
  
John slid into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut as quietly as possible. Evan drew the knife he always carried and popped the ignition collar, fingers working through the wires. Two flicks of his wrist, a spark, and the engine rumbled to life.  
  
Evan kept the lights off as he eased the car away from the sidewalk and down the street. It wasn’t until three blocks later that he turned them on and relaxed.  
  
John studied his profile, the shadows dancing over his features as they passed under streetlights. He was seeing Evan for the first time.  
  
_I can boost anything. You ever seen_ Gone in Sixty Seconds _? My crew was that good. I was that good._  
  
No kidding.  
  
They traded cars three times before John figured out where they were, and where they were going - out of the city. He stared in the rearview mirror at the fading city lights. If he’d felt lost in the maze of fluorescence and cement, he felt even more lost now.  
  
“Where are we going?” John asked.  
  
“Like I told your ex-wife, people are playing checkers on a chessboard, and the queen is coming for them.”  
  
“That’s not an answer.”  
  
“We’re going to see the queen.”


End file.
